Filters
- The occult on screenCourse start date: Tue 30 Apr 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Gillian McIverSurprisingly, not every film that features the occult is a horror film. Certainly, many of them are; we will consider classics such as Haxan from 1922, Rosemary’s Baby, The Craft, Angel Heart, The Witch and Hereditary. Other films, such as Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising and A Dark Song, attempt to treat the occult seriously as secret or hidden knowledge. We'll examine the cultural backdrop of occult films and questions of representation, gender relations, and spirituality.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £149.00 Concession £97.00 - An introduction to filmCourse start date: Fri 3 May 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Jon WisbeyDevelop your critical understanding of cinema through a range of concepts and critical approaches in film studies, including narrative, genre, spectatorship, authorship and directors, popular cinema, art cinema, national cinema and early film, along with technological developments including the transition to sound, while we view and discuss a range of key films from cinema's history as examples.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information. - How to read a film: a beginners' guide to cinemaCourse start date: Mon 13 May 2024 (and 2 other dates)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Paul SuttonThis course will develop your critical appreciation of the cinema by teaching you how to read and understand film texts. We will look at the elements that underpin film form – narrative, mise en scène, cinematography, editing and sound – alongside its historical development. We will consider film style by exploring classical, post-classical and art cinema and we will examine influential critical modes of analysis, such as genre, authorship and spectatorship.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £97.00 - Reading images: exploring film studiesCourse start date: Wed 29 May 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Cristina MassaccesiThis comprehensive introductory course provides an overview of the main historical, technical and theoretical aspects of filmmaking and film analysis. In its exploration of aspects of film theory as it relates to film aesthetics and film history, the course develops certain ideas with rigour and depth.Full fee £99.00 Senior fee £99.00 Concession £64.00 - Ways into advanced film studies: film theoryCourse start date: Tue 4 Jun 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Paul SuttonThis advanced level film studies course will introduce you to a range of theoretical approaches to the study of film. It will consider some of the earliest attempts to think about film, studies that borrowed methodologies from other disciplines. As early as 1915, for example, writers were applying psychology to film analysis, exploring the emotional responses of audiences to this still new medium. Early theorists argued for film as a distinct art form, and we will examine a number of their key texts. In the 1960s, film studies began to develop as a specific subject of study in universities in the US and the UK, once again deploying perspectives from other subject areas. We will examine a number of these theories and consider their continued importance for the analysis and understanding of film today.Full fee £99.00 Senior fee £99.00 Concession £64.00 - Cultureplex ciné-club tasterCourse start date: Thu 12 Sep 2024 (and 2 other dates)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Paul SuttonCome and join us for a taste of what happens at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club. For one day only, and during a compressed hour and a half, we will watch and discuss a short film replicating the structure of the upcoming Cine-Club course, where we watch and discuss full-length feature films. The Cultureplex Ciné-Club course takes its cue from the famous Parisian Ciné-club set up by the celebrated critic and writer, André Bazin, however, this incarnation of the film club will offer an opportunity not only to have a taste of what the full Cine-Club course (running throughout next year) has to offer, but it will also allow for the viewing of a short film, followed by detailed discussion and debate. The film will be introduced, placed in both its cinematic, cultural and historic context as well as being situated within the director’s body of work. In sharing our viewing in City Lit’s premier screening room, the Cultureplex, we will approximate the experience of watching film in the cinema, one that is intense and fully focussed in a way that other modes of viewing often are not. After the screening we will devote the rest of the class to a collective exploration of the film, led by the tutor, but involving everyone in a participatory discussion that will allow all to express their responses, their views, their thoughts on the film screened.Full fee £10.00 Senior fee £8.00 Concession £7.00 - Film studies tasterCourse start date: Sat 14 Sep 2024 (and 4 other dates)
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Paul SuttonLearn how to evaluate and discuss films while enjoying a working example of a City Lit Film Studies class. In this class we will view and explore clips from a number of films, including popular remakes, enabling us to consider and compare themes and techniques from differing filmmaking countries. There will be a chance to review – in brief – film courses at City Lit (September - December 2024).
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £10.00 Senior fee £10.00 Concession £10.00 - Art history and cinemaCourse start date: Tue 17 Sep 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Gillian McIverSince cinema's earliest days, literature has provided movies with stories. But there is another way of looking at film: through its relationship with painting, the oldest of the art forms.
We’ll look at paintings by Friedrich, Titian, Hopper, Bacon, Delaroche and many more. We’ll view Red Desert, Pan’s Labyrinth, Easy Rider – looking at realism, surrealism and more.
As you can see, all of these are quite different! Let’s see how movies connect us to art history.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £129.00 Concession £84.00 - Japan at the picturesCourse start date: Tue 17 Sep 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Jean-Baptiste de VaulxThis course will introduce you to the cinema of Japan, one of the world’s most important national cinemas. It will introduce you to films by major Japanese directors, such as Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi and Kitano. It will also explore the aesthetics of these films, situating them within their broader historical, cultural, critical and industrial contexts. It will also look at the functioning of genre and the peculiarities of the star system within Japanese filmmaking.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £179.00 Concession £116.00 - Exploring British cinemaCourse start date: Wed 18 Sep 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Jon WisbeyDefining itself around themes such as realism, class and national identity, British cinema continues to find critical and popular acclaim, both domestically and internationally. This course explores British cinema, past and present, through a range of critical concepts and approaches, films - including both popular and art house - and filmmakers, and considers its function as a national cinema.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £119.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £77.00 - 50 films from the 50s: Hollywood's last standCourse start date: Mon 23 Sep 2024 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: John WischmeyerThe 1950s was the beginning of the end for the Hollywood studio era, a golden age in place since the 1920s. The fifties are more difficult to pin down than the 1930/40s due to explosive diversity in both subject matter and cinematic technology, the profound influence of WWII, the development of European neorealism and the first signs of the French New Wave. An emphasis on teen culture emerged, represented by the brief career of James Dean. Film stars became anti-heroes. The moguls who founded Hollywood began to disappear. The studio business model was doomed. Hollywood reacted both defensively and creatively, going for broke—and producing some of the finest and most enduring films in its history, films that transformed the culture, from Sunset Blvd. (1950) to Some Like It Hot (1959)—both by Billy Wilder. From The Asphalt Jungle (1950) to The Misfits (1961)— Marilyn Monroe’s first and final films, both directed by John Huston. From Here To Eternity (1953 Fred Zinnemann) to A Place in the Sun (1951 George Stevens, part of his American trilogy). Fifties’ films reflected a darkening America. (See related courses on Fifties Musicals, Melodrama and Film Noir).Full fee £289.00 Senior fee £231.00 Concession £188.00 - Cultureplex ciné-club 2Course start date: Thu 25 Apr 2024 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Paul SuttonCome and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club 2, where once a week, for 12 weeks (and throughout the academic
year), we will watch and discuss film. Taking its cue from the famous Parisian ciné-club set up by the celebrated critic and writer, André Bazin, ‘the single thinker most responsible for bestowing on cinema the prestige both of an artform and of an object of knowledge’, and the man who foresaw the emergence of film studies as a legitimate discipline of academic study, our contemporary incarnation of the film club will offer a curated series of films for detailed study, discussion and debate. Each film will be introduced, placed in both its cinematic, cultural and historic context. In sharing our viewing in City Lit’s premier screening room, the Cultureplex, we will approximate the experience of watching film in the cinema, one that is intense and fully focussed in a way that other modes of viewing often are not. After the screening we will devote the rest of the class to a collective exploration of the film, led by the tutor, but involving everyone in a participatory discussion that will allow all to express their responses, their views, their thoughts on the film screened.
Please note that this course will screen a new and different set of films to HF211 Cultureplex Cine-Club, which will run with the same films screened last year. If you took the Cultureplex Cine-Club course last year (2023-4), please ensure that you take the Cultureplex Cine-Club 2 courses this year.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £199.00 Concession £129.00 - Masters of cinema: Wes AndersonCourse start date: Thu 17 Oct 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Graham Rinaldi“I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets. There were times when I thought I should change my approach but in fact, this is what I like to do. It’s sort of like my handwriting as a movie director.” Explore the signature style and adventurous cinema of Wes Anderson from coming of age films through stop motion animation to comedy dramas.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £49.00 Senior fee £49.00 Concession £32.00 - History on film and TVCourse start date: Mon 28 Oct 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Gillian McIverHistorical drama is one of the most popular movie genres. But how accurate is it, and is that important? We will look at a sample of films and TV shows set in the Tudor era of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, to explore how the depiction of the past is presented on screen. Who are the heroes and villains, and do these depictions affect our understanding of real-life history? We’ll examine Elizabeth, The Other Boleyn Girl, Anonymous, Mary, Queen of Scots, A Man for All Seasons, and more.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £119.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £77.00 - Ways into advanced film studies: film aestheticsCourse start date: Wed 30 Oct 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Paul SuttonHave you wondered why a film might have moved you so powerfully or why it looked so stunningly beautiful? Have you wanted to know quite how a film was able to communicate its story to you so effectively? If so, then this advanced level film studies course is for you. It aims to explore in depth the language of cinema, the way in which film connects with its spectators at the level of film form, in other words, film aesthetics. Writers and critics have long asked similar questions, as have filmmakers themselves, and we will follow some of the most celebrated in their quest for answers. We will look briefly at how films are made and at the importance of cinematography, editing, mise en scène and sound, before exploring in depth film’s aesthetic qualities. We will think about the importance of history for the development of film form and we will analyse clips and sequences from individual films so as to better approach and understand film aesthetics.Full fee £119.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £77.00
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